


Hardwood

by Deepdarkwaters



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sex Shop, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-09 16:02:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7808221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I thought this was, like, a horse shop," Eggsy says stupidly. The man tilts his head slightly to the side, the way dogs do when you say words like <i>walkies</i>. "Cos, I mean, in the window..."</p><p>"Oh, the riding crop? You might use it on your horse, I suppose, if you wanted to."</p><p>"Bruv, do I look like I own a fucking horse?"</p><p>"Do I look like I own a sex shop?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The three of them scatter at the corner and the prick chasing them chooses Eggsy to follow, but he clearly doesn't know what he's got himself into since he keeps yelling _stop_ in that bossy bastard voice the feds all use. Like anyone's going to hear that and just go "oh yeah alright, sorry, I'll just sit on the kerb and let you catch up and arrest me, then."

Eggsy hurtles around a corner, nimbly picking his way between the crowds of morning shoppers without losing any of his speed, crossing his fingers none of them feel in the mood for civic duty today – but the next corner he takes brings him into a quieter street, not as many people, and the roads and alleyways leading off it are unfamiliar to him. Thinking even faster than he's running, he decides there's no fucking way he's taking the risk of backing himself into the stink of bins and piss in a dead end: he slams a hard left instead, racing in two leaps up a little set of steps and shoving through the heavy wooden door of, not sure really, a horse shop or something. He got the briefest glimpse of a single riding crop displayed in the bay window like a sculpture, spotlighted the way the swanky jewellery shops did with their diamond necklaces to make them glitter.

Not much better, really – he's got no delusions about how quickly the posh twats in shops like this will turn him over to the feds if they follow him in – but he's guessing the guy won't expect him to trap himself in a building so it's gonna have to do. Eggsy backs against the wall beside the door, clutching the stitch in his side and breathing hard, waiting to hear footsteps clattering past. Wishing he'd picked a shop with a window in the door so he'd at least be able to see his advancing doom if it chooses to follow him in.

The footsteps clatter past. Eggsy grins, triumphant, and swipes the sweat off his forehead with the cuff off his jacket.

Then someone says, amused, "Good morning, sir. Are you looking for anything in particular? You seem to be in a hurry."

Eggsy looks up, ready to wink or tip his hat or something equally as piss-takey and bolt, but the first thing he sees is a corner cabinet full of fake dicks carved out of wood or blown in glass and that kind of throws him a bit.

"Um," he says.

The second thing he sees is the man who spoke – tall, fifties, glasses, sharp pinstriped suit, a face with all the handsome angles of a forties film star but softened by dimples around the mouth and creases around the eyes. Not exactly the kind of creep Eggsy would've imagined working in a fake dick shop, if he'd ever in his life considered the kind of creeps who might work in fake dick shops. You'd think sleazy, a bit grimy, someone who doesn't blink enough and licks his lips a bit too much and maybe wears like a string vest that possibly used to be white but now it's gone a bit greyish-yellow with sweat and nicotine. Suavey McSuitface here looks like a banker. Prince. Lawyer. Something.

"I thought this was, like, a horse shop," Eggsy says stupidly. The man tilts his head slightly to the side, the way dogs do when you say words like _walkies_. "Cos, I mean, in the window..."

"Oh, the riding crop? You might use it on your horse, I suppose, if you wanted to."

"Bruv, do I look like I own a fucking horse?"

"Do I look like I own a sex shop?"

Eggsy stares at the guy for a moment – seems safer, really, because there's all sorts of alarming shit displayed in cabinets and on shelves around the walls – then gathers himself and says, "Well, I'll just be off, then."

"I wouldn't advise it," the man says, peering around the edge of the green velvet curtain blocking the window from the main shop, or more likely blocking the contents of the shop from the window. "I presume that's the gentleman you were running from. He's still pacing around, and looking rather put out, I might add."

"Fuck," Eggsy mutters, and nudges his cap to the back of his head with his knuckles so he can scrub both hands over his face, mind spinning in sickening circles trying to figure out how to gab his way out of this one. "Swear down I never killed nobody or hurt nobody, it's just..."

 _I nicked this prick I know's car and did like fifteen donuts in his fucking face_. Can't really say that to a guy who probably bathes in milk like Cleopatra and wipes his arse with silk cloth when he shits.

"I was just having a laugh and he didn't find it funny," Eggsy finishes lamely.

The guy doesn't seem to hear him, seeming far more interested in what's going on outside. "Oh, bloody hell, he's heading this way," he says suddenly – and, annoyingly, kind of excited like this is the most fun morning he's had since about 1978. "Into the changing room with you. Strip," he adds as he's shoving Eggsy into the cubicle and dragging the curtain back across.

"What the fuck!"

"Quickly." Eggsy hears hurried footsteps across the floorboards, and the screech of coat hangers sliding along a clothes rail. "Throw these on the floor over your own clothes to hide them. Put this on. These too. I'll do my best to get rid of him, but just in case."

So the first thing of Eggsy's whole life that he doesn't tell his best friends: hiding in a changing room in a sex shop wearing satin bondage trousers and a gas mask while an old guy he's never met lies to the police.

His breath floods his own face, making his skin feel hot and damp and musty with the claustrophobic rubbery metal stench of the mask. Outside, he can hear voices, the out of breath officer asking pretty fucking melodramatically whether a fugitive youth came in here, and the shop guy's blandly polite voice going _I'm afraid not, I've had two ladies and a gentleman in this morning but no fugitive youths_. He's got the kind of voice people trust – posh, for starters, and all kind of warm and friendly and—

Then Eggsy sneezes uproariously, which would be bad enough anyway but turns out when you sneeze wearing a gas mask the air farts out the sides of your face where the mask meets your cheeks. Couldn't be any fucking louder if he'd started twatting about on a trombone in here.

Stomping footsteps draw nearer, and a huge meaty hand flings back the curtain.

"This is absolutely out of line," the shop guy snaps, his voice gone all tight and furious and, somehow, even posher still in his faked anger, sharp enough to cut glass. "His Royal Highness has every right to shop in private. I wouldn't be surprised if Kensington Palace go directly to your superiors and demand your job for this despicable breach of—"

"Alright, alright," the cop says hastily, dragging the curtain back across and backing off. "My apologies, sir. Well, I think that's everything, thank you for your time."

The door bangs and the shop is silent.

After a few moments, Eggsy can hear the stifled sounds of laughter from somewhere across the room. Who the fuck is this idiot?

"His Royal Highness?" he demands once he's battled his way out of the trousers and the disgusting mask and back into his own jeans and polo. He leaves all the shit on the changing room floor and goes marching across the shop – past a shelf full of carved mahogany knobs, past a featureless black suede mannequin all tied up in elaborate rope knots and suspended from the ceiling – to where the guy's sitting behind the counter on a spinny bar stool looking like he can barely contain his mirth. It's almost bubbling out of him, his whole face creasing and dimpling with his smile in a way that makes Eggsy's cheeks feel absurdly hot again even though he's free from the rank mask. "Pretty sure that's some kinda treason, bruv."

"Nonsense, Harry's going to laugh himself sick when he hears. He's a regular client of mine."

"Yeah, ain't sure I needed to have that image in my head, actually." A pause, not quite awkward, as he and the shop guy stare each other down. Of course Eggsy's the first one to break; he gets the feeling, somehow, this bastard could sit and stare and smile like that all day. Maybe he is a bit of a freak after all, saviour or not. "Alright, well. I'm gonna go. Thanks for, you know. Covering for me and all that."

"It was my pleasure. Thank you for livening up my morning." He stands, suddenly, and extends his hand: beautifully manicured nails, long elegant fingers, a gold signet ring encircling the pinkie. "Harry Hart. Please feel free to visit again. Fugitive youths get a ten percent discount, you know."

"Yeah. Uh. Eggsy." He shakes Harry's hand and withdraws quickly, feeling weirdly sweaty and nervous now the thrill of escape seems to be wearing off. "Not sure I will, thanks."

Harry's grin broadens a notch. "As you wish. Have a lovely day, sir."

On his way to the door Eggsy nicks something from a shelf with a sort of fluid, practiced nonchalance, sliding it up his sleeve in such a way that Harry, on the other side of the island of shelves, won't be able to see him do it or notice he's made any movement beyond the normal swagger of his walk. It's not because he particularly wants it – he doesn't even know what he's grabbed – but because he feels rattled in a way he doesn't much like and it's this madman Harry Hart's fault. It's compensation.

He resists the urge to turn back and look at Harry again – this mysterious posh fucker with the smirking eyes and weird as shit approach to dealing with authority figures – and heads back out into the cool morning air to go and look for the boys.

* * *

Harry's just pouring himself a fresh drink when he notices Merlin lurking in the doorway from the back room. "Tea?" he offers. "Plenty in the pot."

"Do you realise that child just stole a butt plug?" Merlin says instead of an answer, folding his arms and giving Harry that hawkish, penetrating stare he does so well. "I saw him on the security camera."

"Of course I realise it." Rather sweet, really. He'd thought he was being so subtle, too busy keeping a watch on Harry to realise there was a mirror on the wall behind him. "I didn't want to say anything, I rather enjoyed the thought of him using it. I'll pay for it myself if you're going to make a fuss."

 _You're a disgusting dirty old man_ , says the look on Merlin's face and the shake of his head as he turns to go back to his workshop, as though being the one to carve and varnish all the hardwood dildos they sell doesn't make him just as bad or worse.

Harry abandons his tea and goes to retrieve the trousers from the changing room floor: folding them carefully, feeling the lingering warmth from the young man's skin. Wondering how soon he'll be back.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You know that scene in Ghost?
> 
> Wellll, instead of Molly and Sam it's Merlin and Harry, and instead of a pot on a wheel it's a dildo on a lathe. (Safety disclaimer, maybe don't actually grope your non-fictional bf if he's working with sharp shit.)

Harry wakes in the night, fumbling into consciousness through the hazy rag remnants of a dirty dream. Automatically he reaches out his hand to the other side of the bed but finds only the empty wrinkled sheet, not even holding any residual warmth from Merlin's body. Sleeping badly again, apparently. He's fairly sure Merlin would go completely nocturnal if he could.

There are two places Merlin always goes when he's restless in the night: for a scalding hot bath, soaking himself in far too much of Harry's staggeringly expensive Czech & Speake bath oil despite complaining like hell any time Harry spends more than fifty pounds on his pamper products, but when Harry gropes for his slippers and heads down the hallway the bathroom is dark and empty. Downstairs, then. Harry ties his dressing gown closed and takes a detour to the kitchen to put the kettle on; he can hear the whirr and screech of the lathe from there, faint through the thick old walls, until the boiling whistle drowns it out.

"It's almost three o'clock," Harry says, letting himself into the workshop at the back of the house and setting one of the cups of tea down on the bench. Merlin doesn't react for a moment, focused intently on finishing the pass with the tool on whatever it is he's working on, but as soon as he's done he twists on his stool and smiles faintly: not much with his mouth, but entirely with his eyes.

"Past your bedtime, isn't it?"

"I sleep badly when you're not there."

"I sleep badly all the time," Merlin admits, as though Harry hasn't known that for years.

"Then so do I." They're silent for a little while, blowing on the surface of their tea, listening to the stillness of the house and the histrionic howling of some old Walker Brothers song playing quietly from the iPod dock on the shelf. "What the hell are you listening to?"

"I don't know. Some sixties playlist I found. Maybe not the best choice," Merlin adds, putting his cup up on the shelf beside the speakers. "Reminds me of being in primary school, but I'm making..." He gestures instead of finishing his sentence, smile finally creeping its way onto his mouth and twisting it into something wry and familiar and lovely. "Seems crude."

"It doesn't look crude." Harry abandons his tea as well, stepping closer to the machinery to peer over Merlin's shoulder at the dark brown wood, black streaks of the growth rings throughout reminiscent of the contour lines on maps even to his squinting, sleepy eyes. "Ebony?"

"Ziricote." Merlin sets the lathe spinning again, selects a new tool, holds it steady against the guide, touches the sharp tip to the blurred wooden cylinder to coax gentle undulations into it between the wider flare of the crown and the base – and of course Harry's mouth goes a bit dry just watching, no different to any other time he's crept in here in the middle of the night to offer tea and watch the show. It's partly the thought that someday soon this thing is going to be varnished and probably rammed inside him to test the first attempt with the new wood, but mostly it's _Merlin's hands_ : scuffed and untidy, always bruised, always grazed, roughened from work in a way Harry had never for a moment anticipated when they were back in university. His hands had been smooth then – gamer hands, avoiding the sunlight hands, always busy scrawling maths calculations and drawing intricate electronics diagrams on graph paper – and as for himself, Harry had blushed so hard the first time they got drunk watching the television in their shared room and one of those fascinating fingers ended up inside his arse that he'd thought he might have an asthma attack or something of the sort despite not even having asthma.

Things change, and he's lucky they do.

The song fades out, and fades into _Unchained Melody_.

"No," Merlin tells him, not even looking up from his work. Frightening how well they know each other, really. "Control yourself."

"It's just like _Ghost_ ," Harry says, because he'd rather not control himself, thank you. He sidles up behind Merlin's stool, ducks to press a kiss to the top of his head, carefully starts trailing his fingertips down Merlin's bare arms below the sleeve hems of the t-shirt he'd gone to bed in.

"I'll let you help if you turn that caterwauling off," Merlin relents, though the exasperated look he gives Harry when he scrolls to a new playlist and sends the first porny guitar notes of Bryan Ferry's _Slave to Love_ wafting into the room implies that he immediately regrets it. Still, a promise is a promise, and dildos don't whittle themselves. When Harry settles behind him Merlin even smiles, leans back against him for a moment with his tired, handsome face twisted back for a kiss.

"It's too small," Harry tells him, muffled against his mouth. "Make me something challenging."

"There's a two and a quarter inch diameter on this monster."

"Make me three."

"One day you're going to split yourself in half," he mutters, as if Harry can't see the way he's flushing all the way to the back of his neck, all the fine little hairs standing up in a shiver of goosebumps when Harry kisses him there. He removes the ziricote piece and finds a block of cherry to replace it with, and when he sets it spinning and gets to work with his rougher to smooth off all the corners he does it with Harry's arms around him, Harry's fingers lingering at his wrists to feel the shudder of the lathe and the steady confidence in Merlin's clever hands.

**Author's Note:**

> Abandoned now, but I hope what's here is fun to read!


End file.
